Economics Teaching

This article introduces a field assignment, which is internationally implementable in introductory economics classes. The assignment involves a visit to a local farmer's market and a couple of grocery stores to observe and experience market interactions of economic agents as well as to collect data on prices for a pre-determined basket of goods. The assignment helps student understand that their daily life actions are highly related to economics and visualise theoretical concepts taught in classrooms such as market mechanisms, prices, market structure, gross domestic product and inflation.

During the past years, all the European economic sectors – including the financial industry – have confronted several challenges, such as periods of contraction alternating with stagnation and the emergent ‘new globalisation’. But there has been no precedent for two changes: the transformation of all markets through pervasive digitisation and the general ageing of society, therefore of the workforce.
The combination of these two shifts is raising several related questions. To what degree is wider technology influencing banking and finance labour? How does digital transformation affect the quality of jobs for both mature and younger workers? What are the tools to handle the workforce ageing while technology innovation advances? What are the best ways to span the demographic divide and the related digital knowledge gap?
Such matters have been discussed through the European project "The European social dialogue and the development of the solidarity between generations of workers: focus on over 55 and young workers in the finance sector. Sustainable growth and generation gap".
This work aims to discuss the confluence of theoretical approaches and the integration of research findings reached by the three scientific partners, who have also taken into account the empirical inputs offered by the unionists

The objective in this paper is to discern how student comments at the Rate My Professors website distinguish between retired professors and contract instructors in economics. A qualitative content analysis is used to investigate whether student comments capture effective teaching, as depicted in the academic literature and whether teaching pedagogy has shifted from critical thinking and challenge to easy expectations and easy grades, as part of the corporatization of education.

Trade unions organisations are called upon to play an important part in promoting the understanding of the risks that banks run when faced with technological progress without the suitable intervention of the human factor. In this respect, unions must check that banks are investing adequate resources in terms of money and time in the reshape of skills.
More than before, there is a need to foster a dialogue between social partners to handle the accelerating aging of the workforce. The concertation must be focused on sharing information, consulting and discussing effective approaches for the management of age differences and the exchange of knowledge between generations. In this way, it is possible to bridge the distance between the different age groups of workers and to achieve intergenerational solidarity, also in the direction of sustainable development in the financial sector.

Unlike standard economics courses, there are limited resources available for instructors who are trained in the mainstream neoclassical paradigm. Many courses in this field are pitched at an advanced level for students pursuing graduate research, or they are pitched through the paradigms of political economy or theology. This paper highlights the key questions and salient ideas in an undergraduate course on the Economics of Religion, thereby providing one example of how potential instructors could structure their course. The idea is to showcase class material so that other instructors, who usually teach neoclassical economics and who are newly deciding to teach a similar class, do not necessarily have to reinvent the wheel in preparing for their classes.

Many Economics 101 students do not major in the subject partly to the subject content that emphasizes abstract models over contemporary issues including climate change, inequality, and financial crises. This critique is of both content and presentation. To this end an unorthodox review of salient ideas of text book by Reardon et al., Introducing a New Economics, is undertaken and paired up with video clips from movies and cartoons to amplify their reach.

Paper can be read here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CB23WHAMZCCBF8H9JFAP/full?target=10.1080/05775132.2021.1984092

The contribution is a chapter of the book entitled Intergenerational Divide and Employee Solidarity. Inclusive Bargaining as a Drive for Change in the Digital Era, edited by Domenico Iodice, published by Adapt University Press, 2020. Project co-funded by the European Union.

ABSTRACT This study aims at exploring the effects of ICT in education. Computers play a vital role in every field of our lives. They facilitate an audio-visual representation of information, thus making the process of learning interactive and interesting in education. Therefore, it is only but natural the role of computers in e-learning has been given a lot of prominence in the recent years. In many countries education system, preservation of information process and transfer is being set on computer surroundings and they are focused on e-learning programmes. E-learning plays a key role in the modern systems of education. E-learning has revolutionised the education industry. Our results show that computer assisted learning has many beneficial effects on learners.

Esta ponencia se desarrolló a propósito de los espacios de reflexión
propiciados por el ciclo de conferencias “Debates sobre la
enseñanza de la ciencia económica” (Primer semestre del 2017) de la
Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Económicas de la Universidad
Nacional de Colombia, tiene por objeto exponer las críticas a
la enseñanza de la economía en Colombia desde dos cuestionamientos:
el primero, acerca de los contenidos de los planes de
estudio y el segundo, alrededor de la formación de economistas
integrales que respondan a las necesidades de la sociedad.

In contrast to the natural sciences, there is no central, agreed body of economic thought to which all 'respectableprofessors of the dismal science' subscribe. Rather economic theory constitutes a collection of competing perspectives and schools, which offer very different interpretations of, and explanations for, economic phenomena.  'A' level economics, however, has taught its subject matter since the late 1950s within a positivist framework, much as if it were a natural science with immutable laws universally applicable to all societies at all times. Students are encouraged to accept either that a particular perspective is the correct approach (eg neo-classical marginalist theory) or alternatively that different theories are simply special cases of the same general model (eg Keynesianism and monetarism within the aggregate supply and demand framework).
Placing such a heavy and uncritical emphasis on positivist methodology is highly questionable. For the vast majority of students, the 'A' level is their first and last contact with the subject and it leaves them with the dangerously- misconceived notion of economics as a precise science. For the minority Who progress to study economics at a higher level, this early experience reduces their ability to make sense of the conflicting ideas they will later encounter. This article argues that these and other problems could be overcome by simply incorporating an elementary review of the philosophy of science into the 'A' level economics syllabus.

Los cambios en la dinámica que ha tomado la economía nacional y su entorno empresarial exigen una modificación en los modelos educativos y en los métodos de enseñanza desde un proceso de aprendizaje continuo basado en el estudiantado, que permita el desarrollo de competencias genéricas necesarias para el buen desempeño laboral. Este estudio tiene como objetivo diseñar, implementar y sistematizar experiencias de actividades de debate en programas de economía que se encuentran en renovación curricular con un modelo educativo centrado en el estudiantado. Las actividades se llevaron a cabo con estudiantes de economía de la Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales de la Universidad del Bío-Bío, Chile. En el diseño de las actividades, se desarrollan versiones alternativas de debates, donde se consideran variaciones en función de algunas características de los grupos. Asimismo, se señala y discute un conjunto de criterios de evaluación. Del mismo modo, se desarrolla un protocolo donde se estructuran las etapas, los detalles logísticos de la actividad y el uso del equipamiento. Los resultados sugieren que la motivación estudiantil es clave para el
éxito de la actividad y propone la definición de los equipos en forma intencionada. Esta experiencia prueba que es posible realizar debates en cursos numerosos, si se definen protocolos alternativos y se entregan los incentivos con base en premios y sanciones
en la dirección correcta. Se concluye que, para que los resultados sean los esperados, se requiere que este tipo de actividades se desarrollen de manera sistemática durante todo el proceso de formación. Asimismo, es necesario comprometer la participación
activa del personal académico y precisar explícitamente el “debate” como una actividad formal de evaluación en los programas.

The study investigated determinants of study habits among Senior High School Economics students in the Kumasi metropolis, Ghana. Specifically, the study developed a relationship between study habits and five other independent variables. The study adopted the quantitative descriptive survey design, and through the simple random sampling technique, 600 students were selected from six schools to serve as respondents. The questionnaire was the main research instrument used for data collection, while a logistic regression model was employed to regress the study habits of the students on the independent variables. Results of the study revealed a significant relationship in the study habits of Economics students of private and public schools, single-sex and coeducational schools, and that of male and female students. The study also revealed a statistically significant positive relationship between the Economics students’ study habits and their parents’ level of educational attainment. Consequently, the study recommends that at periodic intervals, the Economics students be given counselling by instructional specialists and educational psychologists on how to develop and sustain effective study habits.